Hallelujah
by JustCoffeeThanks
Summary: Written for a contest on another site under the prompts; Color, Watchful, Brave. Implied Yaoi. Don’t Like? Don’t Read!


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**WARNINGS!!!**

Contains Character Death and Implied Yaoi. Don't like? Don't read!

Written as an Alternate Beginning/Ending to another fic I'm working on.

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_Maybe there's a God above, but all I've ever learned from love_  
_ Was how to shoot someone who outdrew you_  
_ It's not a cry that you hear at night. It's not somebody who's seen the light_  
_ It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah_

_Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah_

Leonard Cohen

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**Hallelujah; **

_Color, Watchful, Brave_

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He had never claimed to be a wise man, or a courageous man. Never really claimed much of anything as a matter of fact… Truthfully, the only thing he'd ever spoken aloud about himself was that all of his precious people were already dead, and therefore Sasuke couldn't hurt him, because he had nothing left to lose.

_Maybe,_ he thought, staring through the rain from under his hair. His feet cold and wet in the puddle growing beneath him, _maybe that was a lie._

The funeral procession seemed to go forever.

A never ending line of people. Not just shinobi, but civilians too. Hundreds…

Thousands.

Black uniforms with high, white lined collars. Grass hats with tags of mourning hanging from the wide circular brims. Onyx capes with deep hoods and clouds the color of blood.

Millions…

Wet faces turned to a broken sky, as if the heavens themselves mourned and wept along with them.

All marching together. Enemy rubbing elbows with enemy.

Peace born in the face of death.

Love birthed from unimaginable hate, by the simple plunge of a blade.

He recognized faces in the crowd, tattooed cheeks and normally smiling faces, pale eyes and long dark hair pinned back intricately with Anemone, bachelor buttons and agapanthus*. No tears this time. Tears would mock the gift, she said. Would tarnish his sacrifice with her own selfishness.

Windows stood open, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, of those lost, women and men who had not so very long ago cursed his name, threw rose petals,chrysanthemum and orange blossom at the procession, flowing like a tide. Flowers fell with the rain sticking in clots and colorful patches to the sleek black box perched high on tall shoulders. In the lead a single man, dressed in white. The true color of mourning…

The world was dark without his light. A world he loved, fought for, saved and created. It seemed wrong that life should continue. Dreamlike.

Peace was a hollow word if it meant such sadness must be endured.

Kakashi had never claimed to be a wise man, but he knew his limits.

More often than not he ignored them. But sometimes there was no pushing past the pain. No hiding his feelings beneath his many layers.

Sometimes no mask was thick, or concealing enough to hide behind.

He stood alone watching the line of people, his hands at his sides. Hidden back and unnoticed by the multitude crowding in an endless ring around the grave. Solitary and removed, watching.

Thunder rolled and crashed overhead, echoed by sobs and cries of despair.

The familiarity was too real for some, and they drifted away in the arms of those they loved.

Darkness creeping over the village hidden in the leaves.

The strike of a chisel on holy stone in the now empty field became a cadence. Punctuated by a stab of guilt and remorse to his chest.

He watched them like a doll, unmoving, unblinking and seemingly dead.

Six people, the surviving members of the rookie nine, gathered in these last moments that struck finality with each character carved in immortal clarity.

They seemed to meld together into one. Arms and shoulders joined, a single mass of humanity.

Sakura and Hinata supported one another. Kiba, on special leave from the hospital, leaning heavily against the for once, unhooded Shino, the bandages around his head covering the ruin of what had once been his eyes, wet with what he wished were tears, because it seemed insanely unfair that the others were able to weep and he was not.

Even Shikamaru stood with his head bowed, hair loose and curtain like around his head, Ino's face hidden in the back of his shoulder, fingers tangled helplessly in his tunic.

_So many names… _

He watched them, unable to look away, unwilling to allow himself appear weak and let his gaze waver.

A pause in the mason's ceremonial carving, and the Nara dropped to his knees, Ino crouching with her arms around him, rocking with the sound of her sobs.

_Chouji…_

The mason wiped his eyes and reached for another in the stack of stenciled names.

The chatter of metal on stone, chipping out another reminder of how they'd failed.

After the next pause the blinded Inuzuka choked and shoved away from his friend. Arms swinging wildly as he stumbled away.

Shino gripped Hinata's shoulder tightly for a moment, then turned to follow his teammate, letting the broken young man cling to his sleeve as he was led away.

The tension seemed to grow with each pause. Each discarded stencil, and Kakashi's pulse quickened when the mason lifted the last, snuffed pathetically, and made the first cut.

It was as if the name was being carved on his heart, the traitorous organ seizing at every sharp click of mallet against chisel.

Blue eyes swam in his memory. Smiling even in death, arms wrapped tightly, lovingly around the lifeless body of the one responsible for it all.

Both of them had looked so at peace in the end, like sleeping babes, clinging to each other as the world collapsed around them.

Part of him wondered what had been said between the two in their last moments. What had been shared that left them so cheerfully grinning in the face of a man wielding death's scythe. Striking them down as they embraced like friends… Like brothers.

There was an inevitability to it, that last strike, the final mark.

Like the haunting call of a raven in the dark, it didn't echo long, cut all too short like the boy's life itself.

The mason lowered his tools, swept the stone dust and chips into the grass and pressed his forehead to the ground in respect.

For a while that seemed longer than the few seconds it was, Kakashi stared, his throat tightening, breath quickening, hands trembling.

Sakura and Hinata bowed in unison next to the still kneeling Shikamaru. Adding their own to the mountain of colorful flora creating a great spiral on the ground.

Such a beautiful gesture seemed pale and ugly to Kakashi. Like putting band-aids on a gaping chest wound.

_Yeah… That's what it feels like._

_Like my chest is hanging open and birds are eating my insides._

Morbidly his mind created fantastical mental images of this and finally he moved. Pressing the heel of a hand over his tainted gift. Feeling a mute, humorless chuckle in his throat…

When he raised his head again it was to watch the retreating backs as the last of the mourners left in the face of night.

The field was empty for a moment. The rain pattering against waxed paper, tissue and cellophane bundled flowers. Stray petals from Inoichi's eerie, and yet beautiful jutsu, floated down from the sky.

Everything was still. As if all life had been erased along with his…

Kakashi remembered that small, half starved bundle of energy and high hopes, the only thing bigger than his eyes, the scope of his dreams. That small, broadly grinning face, thin hateful whisker scars some drunken bastard had carved into his face one night when the boy was too young to remember, stretched pale and silver on his tanned face.

All sarcasm and mischief— Determination and pure fucking LOVE…

The boy whose existence had been sparked in death, nurtured in such vile hatred for what was sealed inside him, and grown into such a gallant, and caring man. Into a powerful, loyal and—

Kakashi felt his clothes wet as his behind hit the ground, fingers tangled in grass and mud.

He didn't understand. Couldn't comprehend how it was possible that the boy was dead. That such a person, was just gone. The person he'd watched grow, live and thrive, now an empty husk, a cold lifeless cluster of decaying cells and bone sealed under earth and stone. Buried and forgotten, as if he never was…

The person his sensei had sacrificed himself for now gone… All the determination, joy, enthusiasm, passion and heart GONE.

_What a waste…_

Kakashi looked down at himself bitterly. Spitefully rubbing his muddy hands on the wet white cloth of his robes. Pulling at the fabric, at the symbol of a dream shattered, stripping back the honor that felt too much like a pallid tribute to a young man who would never grace the office he had worked his whole life to hold.

Kakashi turned his masked face into the rain, sitting with his head bowed, bracing himself upright with a palm on sullied garments dressed in his jounin blues. Looking somehow trampled and small amid all the rumpled silk stained brown with wet earth.

He didn't realize he wasn't alone until he heard the other man's voice call to him.

"Idiot… He would beat you senseless for getting those robes all muddy you know." And a hand pulled him bodily up by the front of his shirt, "And at his funeral no less!"

Iruka pulled the ruined cloth up from the ground and threw it in Kakashi's face. His eyes bloodshot and watery. "You honor his memory by throwing down what he desired most as if it were garbage! How DARE YOU!"

Iruka attacked him with curled fists, and a torn sob.

Kakashi let him land three punches that lacked the force behind them that both knew should have been there, one for each of the rookie nine he failed. Then caught the former chuunin's fist in his own, and stopped the forth dead between them.

Iruka didn't apologize. His eyes, so dead seeming, burned into Kakashi's own. Sooty gray, and the dark, nearly black remainder of Obito's Sharingan. Making him feel somehow insignificant and unworthy…

Iruka was like an elder brother to Naruto. The man was loyalty personified.

They'd fought before over the boy… Memory of it painful to recall, but flashing in perfect detail in his mind's eye.

Their hands shook where they were poised between them. The force Iruka still exerted almost inhuman.

Kakashi didn't dodge or try to deflect the man's other hand… The fifth punch landed square on his cheek, twisting his head sharply to the side, for the teacher himself. Penance for costing Iruka the family he'd managed to scratch together since his parents were killed.

And the younger man's hands dropped to his sides, chest heaving, eyes watering. Realizing exactly what he'd done, but not sorry for it in the slightest.

For a long while they stared at one another. Thunder rolling above them like a drum in the distance.

"I'm sorry, Iruka-sensei…"

He turned, cradling the ruined clothing in his arms, moving on unsteady legs he approached the stone. Never before having felt so apprehensive of being near it.

For years he'd spent hours standing before it every day he was able. Staring at the names of those he'd lost, and those who paid the village's ultimate price.

He couldn't get within fifteen feet of it now. His legs shaking, chest so tight he could barely breathe.

Suddenly there was a hand on his, fingers shorter, but grip bruising. A shoulder and elbow pressed alongside his arm. A firm wall of humanity, chilled by the rain, but stronger than anything he'd ever encountered. Stronger than any man had the right to be.

How had he not noticed it before?

This chuunin— _Ex-chuunin… Today we're just people._

_He always smiled. So grateful… When everyone else was angry, when I was bitter and hurt, he treated me no different. _

Kakashi remembered vividly, a bright cheeky smile from the lost blonde. His face reddened by sun, and smudged with dirt, speaking kindly of his 'Iruka-sensei'. Slipping up sometimes with his honorifics, lost in the passion of his tale; 'Iruka-niisan'.

_"He always buys me ramen when I get back from a mission, no matter what! Even if I'm tired and cranky and I don't smell too good. He pets my head and tells me he's proud. And he gives really good hugs too! Not the little fake ones like Sakura-chan gives me when she has to… When Iruka-sensei hugs you he means it!" The scrawny little kid's smile widened considerably on his dirty half starved face, eyes shining with warmth and love greater than any child in his condition should be capable of expressing; "I think you and Iruka-nii should be friends! Maybe you wouldn't be so lonely all the time!"_

They knelt as one in the puddle before the stone. Eyes not going directly to those newly carved names, but seeking out earlier familiarities.

Obito, Iruka's parents, Minato-Sensei, Rin, a handful of familiar names Kakashi could only associate with Anbu masks, the taste of sweat and the sing of deadly steel. Hayate, The Third, Asuma, still more faceless names. Jiraiya, Akamichi Chouji, Inuzuka Hana, Akamaru, Six Hyuuga, including Hinata's father and then…

Inside the newly formed groves the stone was still dry. Still fresh, the edges sharp and clean, not rounded and smooth with the pressure of hands over thousands of tracings.

Their fingers followed the carvings. The first to touch it, but definitely not the last. Never the last. Marking each curve and angle. Searing it in their minds like a hot brand over supple flesh. It seemed to burn, those etched words. Standing out stark and alien, and Kakashi wanted to erase it, stick the chipped pieces of stone back into them and make it go away, wanted to shake himself and wake up, because this just couldn't be real.

It was too horrid, too sad, too unexpected.

Iruka stood, fingers still twined with Kakashi's pale ones. Looking oddly, in some far part of his mind that still found things funny, like their hands were the color of tea and cream.

Kakashi slowly rose, head bowed, hair limp and hanging over his forehead into his eyes.

Slowly, feet squishing on the wet soil they entered the spinning labyrinth of flowers from fellow Fire country citizens, polished stones of remembrance from Rock, chunks of dazzling quartz and opals from Suna as well chimes, water bells from the Sea, offerings of rich Mist Sake, diamonds and jewels from the land of Snow…

Every nation was represented, mingling and swirling in unified magnificence creating a great spiraling pathway to a stone platform.

A cold consolation to the warmth that once was.

The hand in his tightened and Iruka barely recognized the voice rasping in his ear.

"He once suggested that you and I should be friends…"

Iruka felt his throat catch even as a wistful grin claimed his lips. "When he was younger he told me you were an unfair pervert…" He rubbed his nose. "But he always did have a way of complaining bitterly about someone, and still caring for them unconditionally…" His voice faded away.

Kakashi just stared at the slab and the gold lettering on black that made it so beautiful and so tragic in the same instant. His left hand lifted, bandages feeling wet and loose, fingers sluggish and trembling as he reached toward it.

He could feel the rain splashing off the smooth surface and his fingers found they could no longer move. Unable to go forward, unwilling to retreat.

If he touched this… Touched the boy's grave it would be real. And he didn't want it to be real. He wanted to wake up, wanted it all to have been a horrible dream he could clutch his head over and hide from behind his masks.

He couldn't help but picture him waking up trapped, unable to breathe, buried in a field too far away for anyone to realize the mistake and rescue him.

He felt the fear himself.

Small spaces terrified him. Closed in environments made him panic, even though he was able to hide their effect most of the time… It was all sensei's fault, having to hide young Kakahsi in a trunk on one particular mission to infiltrate an enemy stronghold. He'd been trapped in the coffin like box for six hours… The enemy having sealed him inside when he'd accidentally sneezed and given away his position.

"Ne… Iruka-sensei… Sh-should we put a bell up?" He remembered the strange contraptions he'd seen in Rock Country grave yards as a child, bells on chains leading into crypts and tombs. Alarms for those who may have only been in a death like state when enshrined. (Which really wasn't uncommon when it came to ninja.)

Iruka could feel the other man shaking. See the tremors in his still outstretched hand. He forced himself to turn, pressing masked cheeks between his palms and forcing mismatched, panicked eyes to connect with his own. "He's not there anymore." He smiled, even as his eyes overflowed, and his voice became thick and strained, breath hitching and breaking like a fragile leaf of glass. "He's not there anymore… Everything that made Naruto Naruto is gone. His spirit, everything we l-loved has moved on." He had to take a moment to swallow, and blink, his smile faltering, lips trembling; "What's in there… He doesn't need anymore. He's with his parents, your— OUR parents too. All his own and all of our ancestors…Jiraiya, Chouji a-and S-sasuke too."

It felt strangely like some wall, or dam in his chest failed and his hands came up. Trying to push the teacher's wrists away. Trying to push everything away. Tossing his head desperately in a futile attempt of waking. Of erasing this hideous wrong.

No.

It wasn't acceptable. It was NOT— COULD NOT…

He fought, grinding his teeth, growling, swallowing past the painful tightness in his throat. Pulling at his hair.

It had to be a nightmare. It just HAD to.

And those tanned hands, callused and patterned with pale scars, splotched with ink and care, petted his head, voice high and trembling, and still hopeful despite it all, released a strange sound. Like water rushing from a spigot or the wind in tall trees.

"Shhhhhhh…"

So long it seemed, since he'd heard such a sound, but his body reacted to it as it had so many years ago when it had been made by his father, holding him to his broad chest, humming that everything would be alright, that he would see his mother again someday, and she wouldn't be sick. She would be strong and she would know his name, hold his face in her heart. Told him that everything would be OK because now Mother wasn't in pain any longer. Her suffering was over and she was free.

Kakashi dropped his head forward onto Iruka's shoulder, feeling small and delicate, easily broken, with the other man's slightly bulkier arms around him.

_Naruto was right… Why couldn't he have been wrong? I don't think it would hurt as much if he'd been wrong._

They stood in the rain for a long while, darkness enveloping them completely. The distant lights of windows the only indication that there was anybody else in the entire village.

Streetlights lit, glowing faintly orange in the gloom. Wreathed in spectral halos of refracted raindrops.

Kakashi felt oddly numb, chilled, and the school teacher's fingers slid upward again, making him lift his head, forcing their eyes to meet.

Iruka still smiled and he was reminded of a saying he'd overheard the teacher use at the Third's funeral.

_'I can either smile or cry.'_

At first he'd thought the teacher callous, but now he understood.

In a situation such as this, you really have only two options. Mourn forever what could have been, or look ahead to what now can be done.

The younger man cleared his throat, his voice coming out in a whisper; "Okay now, Hokage-sama—"

Kakashi molded his hands to the backs of Iruka's fingers, feeling a strength in them. A stability that, at the moment, he lacked. "Kakashi…"

Iruka looked at him puzzled for a second blinking, the pretense of a smile forgotten.

"That… That's all I really ever wanted to be." He continued; "Not 'Copy-nin' or Hokage-sama, or anything like that really… Jus-just… Kakashi."

Iruka looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. Eyebrows slowly drawing curiously downward, head tilting to the side; "Kakashi."

He nodded, somehow relieved that, for this day, for this moment, he didn't have to be anything other than what he was. A weight removed it seemed.

"Kakashi… I think— I think we should get out of this rain before we catch pneumonia…" He gnawed his lip and bowed his head against the other's brow.

He received a single quick nod as a reply, and they moved as if through thick syrup, slowly gaining momentum the farther from the gravesite they got. Finding each step easier than the last, until they were in the street, and that sense of unreality swept over them again, because no flowers littered the way. Not a single petal. As if all evidence had been erased, or they had stepped back in time.

Iruka had intended to lead the other man to his home. That comfy little apartment with all the warm reminders of those who he loved. The pictures, the knickknacks, a pair of Naruto's pants he'd torn in the crotch that needed repaired…

He wasn't disappointed when Kakashi seemed to lead without meaning to, pulling with just the sound of his breath and the hitch in his throat, to a small fenced off yard hidden amid the trees.

The garden was over grown, the pathway riddled with weeds, fallen branches littered the yard.

As if suddenly realizing where he'd unwittingly been walking, Kakashi stopped in his tracks, shoulders gone tense, voice coming out in a whine, staring up at the building standing only two stories tall, windows dark and cold looking.

"I-I come here when I… Need to be alone." He pictured the brunette seeing the state of this place and shuddered. No, it was best if he stayed alone. He tried to shrug the teacher off, clearing his throat, eyes gone cold, breath bubbling through the saturated fabric of his mask.

He held his robes to his chest, like a shield. "Thank you for walking me home, Iruka-sensei… I think I—"

His voice stopped in his throat. Choked, coughed, and tried again but nothing would come out.

Iruka looked up at him, his eyes dark, heart aching; "Do you really want to be alone tonight?"

He glanced up, past the teacher, at the rooftops, feeling for the Anbu guards who'd been following him, but for some reason, maybe they'd left, he couldn't sense a single one.

"Because I… I don't really want to be alone tonight." Iruka felt himself chuckle, and the ache that had been building in his chest tightened, causing the sound to hiccup pathetically in his throat.

Kakashi tried futilely once again to force his body away from Iruka's. Wanting to duck from under that reassuring, warm arm, shrink back from the heat and the emotion this man so freely exhibited, because it frightened him. How was Iruka able to hurt, but still be so inhumanly strong? While he wanted nothing more that to lock himself away in his father's old house and howl at the walls like a caged beast. Beat his breast and tear long bloody furrows in his own shoulders as he tried to squeeze out the ache in his heart.

Iruka's grip on him tightened, and they were walking forward.

The foyer was empty, and in the main room furniture was tossed in broken heaps against the walls. Thick chakra barriers up on all sides to block out the sound, and keep any flares inside.

Iruka felt like he was stepping into a haunted house, a place of monsters and demons and dark thoughts. A dead, thick aura seemed to radiate from the very air inside this coffin like building.

The smell of madness and despair was thick, and he realized this bitterness was a smell that always hung on Kakashi. Before that day he'd associated it with herbal balm. Some potent stuff rubbed on sore muscles, but now he knew, and it hurt to think that this man, kept it all stuffed deeply within his soul, and had packed it so tightly, it changed his very scent.

A physical presence of shame and misery lived here… And his name was Kakashi.

He walked stiffly, bare feet padding against dusty floor boards, carrying the clothes of an office he'd neither wanted nor (in his opinion) deserved, like one would carry a newborn.

Iruka was right. He was disgracing everything Naruto had wanted by pulling them through the mud.

There as no light in the little wash room, but the plumbing worked well enough, and carefully, with scarred hands turned gentle, he rinsed the silk clean, completely forgetting anyone else was in his home.

Each crease was cautiously cleansed, each seam delicately handled.

He would be more careful this time. He would be Hokage for Naruto, he would make sure the boy's dreams were fulfilled.

Feeling as if he were encroaching on something as close to a religious experience as Kakashi could get, Iruka turned from the wash room, arms crossed tightly over his chest, staring around, watching the fog of his breath in the chilly house. Counting the cobwebs and burn marks on the walls, the patched plaster where he could tell fists had gone through. The chunks missing from door frames where kunai and shuriken had been embedded, some so deeply he could see the dark wood skeleton of the house…

The only room that seemed to be untouched was a study, shut off from the rest of the house by delicate paper doorways. Sliding one to the left as quietly as he could, Iruka peered in.

Book shelves lined each wall, and sitting in the middle of the room, black surface gleaming and freshly dusted, not showing a single smudge of a fingerprint, was a baby grand piano.

He'd seen smaller, wood toned uprights before. There was one at the academy, and one at the Public Hall. But he'd never seen a piano like this outside of a book before. Felt as if he were sullying it by even looking at it.

Leaving it, his eyes scanned the rest of the room. Taking in the books, unable to read their titles through the gloom, photos sat on some shelves, clean and gleaming.

He recognized faces in them. The Forth, a young Kakashi, looking stubborn and dead-eyed even at such a young age.

There was a picture of Kakashi with bandages all over him in a hospital bed, eyes dark, directing a damning glare at whoever had snapped the photo.

Another of a toddler scowling as a slender woman with dark hair and a smile cut his own silver hair. One of that same child, years later standing beside his father, their expressions identical beneath matching masks.

In every picture Iruka found, the version of Kakashi staring back at him seemed doll like, imitating someone else in the picture, or just staring blankly.

He saw the jounin he remembered, before this whole mess had started, staring back at him from the Forth's face. Sarcastic eyes, same pose standing over his gennin team.

Looking at those photos, Iruka wondered more and more… Who was Kakashi? Did Kakashi himself even know the answer to that question anymore? Or was he just a hollow person, a shadow going about patterns he'd learned to copy from youth. Just a creature of his environment.

What a frightening concept.

_'That's all I really ever wanted to be. Not 'Copy-nin' or Hokage-sama, or anything like that really… Jus-just… Kakashi.'_

Glancing at his watch and realizing almost an hour had passed since he'd walked away from the other man, Iruka left the study, that felt more like a shrine, and walked softly back to the washroom. Only to find Kakashi was still meticulously rinsing. Eyes empty and watering, shoulders shaking, fingers pruned in the cold water.

He struggled, trying to twist and bow free of Iruka's arms when he was embraced tightly from behind. But the teacher didn't let go of him. Knowing that such weak protests, such silence wasn't really a cry to be released, but more of an inward fight for freedom.

All his life he'd been taught to be cold. Efficient, emotionless. And on the outside he'd succeeded, but inside… If all the layers were to be stripped back, all the masks removed, Iruka knew what he would find, knew as surely as he knew his own face.

With a gentle hand on Kakashi's wrist, he drew their palms over the thudding of his heart.

"Don't hold it in… Please, don't hold it in anymore, Kakashi. It's OK."

He took a slow step away, drawing Kakashi with him, ear pressed to his back, listening to the beat of his heart, the wind of his breath, and the sounds of his body. Wet noises of swallowing, a soft gurgling from his stomach, it all screamed LIFE in Iruka's ear like nothing else could.

IT wasn't a sound, because in all actuality the only sound Kakashi made when it happened was a sigh.

But, Iruka felt it. Tension built like a tsunami, gaining power and momentum, churning up all the dirt and muck and darkness that had clogged in that slender chest for the last thirty years.

How cruel, it seemed, that something so crushing, and so painful, could only amount to a sigh as it was released.

Kakashi wanted to scream. Wanted to shout, and roar and throw things and destroy something.

But— He was just… Just so tired of it all.

His limbs felt heavy, but Iruka caught him, easing them both to the floor, tanned arms tight around his shoulders, face pressed to his hair.

How long they sat there, huddled against one another, he didn't know. But when he opened his eyes again the rain had stopped, and silvery moonlight shone down through patchy cloud cover.

Looking around, the house no longer seemed so frightening, so ugly and detestable. The walls did not laugh and mock him, the floors did not resound with phantom footsteps. He was alone, but not solitary. And for some reason, he couldn't understand. The teacher's presence was a relief.

The cold damp of his clothes had leeched away his body heat and Kakashi felt himself shivering, felt Iruka shiver as well.

They stood, swaying, walking with heavy feet, but seeing nothing substantial, feeling like ghosts floating up the stairs, hands linked so they weren't pulled away by a draft, or stray breath. Passing rooms whose furniture was only graced by memories, photos of faces with no light in their eyes.

The door hissed with rusty hinges when Kakashi pushed it open and Iruka followed his eyes around the room.

The bed was plain, sheets off white, blankets a dingy shade of olive, the walls bare save naked nails and tacks where, long ago, things had been stuck.

Kakashi peeled away his shirt, letting it flop carelessly into the corner to mingle with the dust bunnies and spider webs. His pants followed, and he heard Iruka's clothes dropping as well, a shedding of false snake like skin, of layers, of lies and half-truths.

Bare skin was honest in ways neither of them could ever claim to be.

Iruka was dark everywhere Kakashi was light, his muscles thick, body dusted lightly with course hair, and splashed with pale pink scars.

Kakashi was lean, parts of his body veritable roadmaps of his life, skin dotted on his shoulders, chest and cheeks with a fine spray of little freckles. His nose was long, protruding just a little in a way children like to highlight with jeers and cruel laughter, a birth mark at the corner of his mouth, and a jagged scar through his lower lip and chin…

Surprised as he was to turn and find Kakashi standing there bare and maskless, shifting shyly on his feet, Iruka found it oddly ironic that the man looked very little like how he'd imagined. He was surprisingly flawed, from the freckles and stray acne scars, all the way down to the gap of a missing canine when his teeth ground together, creating a fence, trying to hold back a muffled choking sound.

He wasn't beautiful… But, Iruka pulled him close, and breathed in the scent of chilled flesh and damp hair, of sadness and longing, fear and despair.

The bed sheets smelled musty, disused, but they kept in the heat of flesh on flesh, of arms cradling and fingers grasping for purchase.

Kakashi wanted to pull them over his head like he'd done as a very small child to shield himself from the world, from everything, if only for a moment. But he couldn't bring himself to lift his arms from around the other man. Couldn't force himself to disengage from that tanned skin, or move his head from that living chest. Instead he closed his eyes and started counting the strong, heavy beats of Iruka's heart.

The night outside the window was silent. The pattering of a leaking gutter against the glass, the wind in the trees a sound like a thousand whispers. The voice of the village soothing her children.

Across the street a baby started crying, and Iruka shifted his head against the pillow, glancing upward at the moonlight painting grotesque shadows on the curtains before settling down again, hand absently threading through the mop of hair on the other's head.

Kakashi didn't stir, instead, he focused on the sensation of those blunt fingers rubbing his scalp. Focused on how their bodies seemed to fit together like puzzle pieces, and mused on this fact as he watched his hand petting through a few little springy dark hairs on Iruka's chest, his breath slowing and evening into an exhausted and blessedly dreamless sleep.

For a long while after that, Iruka was silent, thinking, trying not to think, watching the glowing patterns along the floor, counting the steps in their slow march across the bed and up the wall. Lingering in the tense gray light of anticipation, those few breathless moments when everything is hushed and the planet seems to hold its breath.

The sun peeked over the mountains. Pale light glistening in the rainy tears rolling down faces carved in stone.

With a deep breath for courage, his chest rising and falling, Iruka sighed.

And the world moved on.

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